I can take my domain, customize DNS records and in a couple of minutes I am using a new provider. They also allow to export email content, which means I obviously don’t lose anything.
With a free email account, you are anyway locked-in as with every provider, because you are using their domain. You can set automatic forwarding in that case.
Vendor lock exists when you invest substantial amount of work to build tools around a specific platform (say, AWS), or where you have no way to easily take the data from one platform out and use something else to do the same thing (say, Meta).
The fact that you can’t use SMTP, which is a protocol that requires data on the server is not a vendor lock-in in any sense of the word. It’s a decision that depends on having that content e2e encrypted, because the two things are simy incompatible.
Also the code for all Proton clients and the bridge is open source, and the bridge is essentially a client that emulates being a server so that you can use your preferred tools to access the emails.
Even in this scenario, there is no vendor lock and all it takes is changing the configuration of your tool from the local bridge address to whatever SMTP server you want to use elsewhere.
Can you please describe in which way you are actually locked-in, to show that you have a clue about what the word means?
The fact that you can’t use SMTP, which is a protocol that requires data on the server is not a vendor lock-in in any sense of the word. It’s a decision that depends on having that content e2e encrypted, because the two things are simy incompatible.
No, they aren’t. There are lots of ways to do e2e encryption on e-mail over SMTP (OpenPGP, S/MIME etc.). SMTP itself also supports TLS for secure server-to-server communications (or server-to-client in submission contexts) as well as header minimization options to prevent metadata leakage. And Proton decided NOT to use any of those proven solutions and go for some obscure propriety thing instead because it fits their business better and makes development faster.
Also the code for all Proton clients and the bridge is open source, and the bridge is essentially a client that emulates
The bridge exists yet, you can only run in certain devices AND it only exists until they allow it to exist. You don’t know if there are rate limits on the bridge usage and other small details that may restrict your ability to move large amounts of email around.
They also allow to export email content, which means I obviously don’t lose anything.
Decent providers will give you an export option that will export all your e-mail using industry standard formats such as mbox and maildir. Do you know what Proton does? They provide you a convoluted mess of EML files + metadata as JSON files that you can’t import to another service without some data loss. Same goes for Contacts and Calendars.
E-mail, contacts, calendars, notes and whatnot is one of the few truly open and truly interoperable solutions we still have nowadays. Protocols like IMAP, POP3, SMTP, WebDAV, CardDAV, CalDAV make it so you can have e-mail at any provider, talk to people from other providers and use any client application you would like - not like the bullshit that Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal and others that that you can only communicate with people using the same provider.
Proton mail is so closed that you can’t even sync your Proton mail contacts / calendars with iOS or Android - you can only use their closed source mail client to access that data or the webui. Not even Apple, the most anti-competitive and closed company in the world, holds your contacts and calendars hostage - they allow you to sync with ANY CardDAV and CalDAV server and their iCloud service also supports those protocols so you can use it any 3rd party client.
Proton doesn’t respect the open internet by not basing their services on those protocols and then they feed miss-information (like the thing about e2e encryption being impossible on SMTP) and by using it you’re just contributing to a less open Internet.
im not involved in this discussion really but i wanna add a couple things.
Proton is the only e2ee email provider that uses PGP interoperability, because they are trying to be more open, and also means that anyone can do e2ee with you not just other proton accounts. this is different from skiff, tuta, etc
also their export tool allows mbox, contrary to what you said.
What vendor lock-in are you talking about?
I can take my domain, customize DNS records and in a couple of minutes I am using a new provider. They also allow to export email content, which means I obviously don’t lose anything.
With a free email account, you are anyway locked-in as with every provider, because you are using their domain. You can set automatic forwarding in that case.
Vendor lock exists when you invest substantial amount of work to build tools around a specific platform (say, AWS), or where you have no way to easily take the data from one platform out and use something else to do the same thing (say, Meta).
The fact that you can’t use SMTP, which is a protocol that requires data on the server is not a vendor lock-in in any sense of the word. It’s a decision that depends on having that content e2e encrypted, because the two things are simy incompatible.
Also the code for all Proton clients and the bridge is open source, and the bridge is essentially a client that emulates being a server so that you can use your preferred tools to access the emails. Even in this scenario, there is no vendor lock and all it takes is changing the configuration of your tool from the local bridge address to whatever SMTP server you want to use elsewhere.
Can you please describe in which way you are actually locked-in, to show that you have a clue about what the word means?
No, they aren’t. There are lots of ways to do e2e encryption on e-mail over SMTP (OpenPGP, S/MIME etc.). SMTP itself also supports TLS for secure server-to-server communications (or server-to-client in submission contexts) as well as header minimization options to prevent metadata leakage. And Proton decided NOT to use any of those proven solutions and go for some obscure propriety thing instead because it fits their business better and makes development faster.
The bridge exists yet, you can only run in certain devices AND it only exists until they allow it to exist. You don’t know if there are rate limits on the bridge usage and other small details that may restrict your ability to move large amounts of email around.
Decent providers will give you an export option that will export all your e-mail using industry standard formats such as mbox and maildir. Do you know what Proton does? They provide you a convoluted mess of EML files + metadata as JSON files that you can’t import to another service without some data loss. Same goes for Contacts and Calendars.
E-mail, contacts, calendars, notes and whatnot is one of the few truly open and truly interoperable solutions we still have nowadays. Protocols like IMAP, POP3, SMTP, WebDAV, CardDAV, CalDAV make it so you can have e-mail at any provider, talk to people from other providers and use any client application you would like - not like the bullshit that Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal and others that that you can only communicate with people using the same provider.
Proton mail is so closed that you can’t even sync your Proton mail contacts / calendars with iOS or Android - you can only use their closed source mail client to access that data or the webui. Not even Apple, the most anti-competitive and closed company in the world, holds your contacts and calendars hostage - they allow you to sync with ANY CardDAV and CalDAV server and their iCloud service also supports those protocols so you can use it any 3rd party client.
Proton doesn’t respect the open internet by not basing their services on those protocols and then they feed miss-information (like the thing about e2e encryption being impossible on SMTP) and by using it you’re just contributing to a less open Internet.
im not involved in this discussion really but i wanna add a couple things.
Proton is the only e2ee email provider that uses PGP interoperability, because they are trying to be more open, and also means that anyone can do e2ee with you not just other proton accounts. this is different from skiff, tuta, etc
also their export tool allows mbox, contrary to what you said.
From their own documentation:
https://proton.me/support/export-import-emails
you haven’t used the tool. but ok lol.